I searched and couldn’t find examples of how much people add to bottles. I’ve used skratch and never second but never experimented with adding a ton to a single bottle then hydrating with plain water. I mean I’ve done 2 scoops in a bottle for skratch and same for never second but I wouldn’t consider that super concentrated. Say for a 4 hour ride if you wanted 50g carbs/hour from your never second c30 mix you would add just under 7 scoops to one bottle, take in a 1/4 bottle per hour and use plain water to hydrate. Are people doing this?

Haven’t used Skratch specifically, but I do mix fructose/maltodextrin in bottles and will do a max of 200g in a bottle. If I need to go 4 hours or more without stopping, I’ll do 2 bottles with 200g each, then have a hydration pack with water. Obviously it’s really important to keep up on the water, super concentrated carb drinks are very hypertonic, so they pull water out of your cells and into your gut, dehydrating you. One potential issue I see with doing 50g/hr for 4 hours with only one bottle, is trying to gauge how much you’ve drank to stay on track, and take small enough sips that you don’t go overboard. With my 2 hour bottles, it’s a bit easier at 30 minutes to say “yep I’ve drank some” and at an hour “that’s about half”, and so on. I feel like it’d be hard to gauge at an hour whether you’ve consumed 1/4 bottle or 3/8 or 1/8, etc. But maybe not an issue.

There’s a “gel” recipe thread that’s doing this [image] DIY Gel recipes (post yours) Nutrition The thread to rule them all. Post your favorite DIY gel recipes here. Drinks and bars are ok too but I really want to concentrate on gels as there are loads of food and drink threads (unless you have a 5* recipe slight_smile ). Please keep the chatter to a minimum and make this just a recipe thread. I’ll add one: Gel - maple syrup. Easy to find, no prep, but VERY sweet. Cheers, Greg

Ultimately, you’re still going to need X amount of fluids per hour depending on conditions, so concentrating everything into one bottle doesn’t seem to have any advantages in my opinion. I usually fill up 2-3 bottles with the amount of carbs I’ll need assuming I’ll be drinking ~1 bottle an hour, again, depending on conditions. If you’re going to have to stop to fill up on water at some point you could always bring some of Skratch’s individual packets to add to your water. Their high-carb 200-cal packets have 50g of carbs each, so perfect for your needs. Their Hydration Sport mix is great for electrolytes so I usually use a bit of both if I’m going to be sweating. :sweat_smile: I personally much prefer sipping on a nice drink mix over a super high concentration chased by water. At that point, you might be better off using gels instead. :man_shrugging:

I am about to head out with my USWE 1.5 liter and 400 grams of sugar in there. I like doing the fuel in the pack so it’s easy to access, especially in races. Then I supplement with water bottles depending on temperature, and it also gives me the option of pouring water on me when it’s hot out. But if it’s cool and rainy, I don’t need as much hydration, vs. if it’s hot out. And I’ve been caught with having a less concentrated mix then just having to stop to pee way too many times. So the concentrated mix with water in bottles works for me, and I’ve easily done 400 grams in 1.5 litres of water. I’m sure I could do it even more concentrated if I needed to.

Do you find it easy to gauge how much you’re drinking out of the pack? I have been wanting to try mixing the carbs in the pack, but am worried that I’d get to the first pit stop (thinking Lumberjack 100, ~3 hour laps) and I’d still have half a pack left or I’d finish the pack half way through the lap.

I tried timing 2/3 of a bottle per hour once and it was way too much mental fatigue on the bike after a couple hours. I also do 1/2 a 32oz bottle per hour but depending on length of ride modulate the bottle between 80-120g of carbs and supplement with a gel and/or solids to get to around 100g/hr.

This has come up mostly in long races. I just did Unbound and had been training with never second in my Uswe pack but at Unbound I could no longer choke down the drink mix and my body seemed to only want plain water. So I switched to plain water and had to adjust plan and get the missing calories by eating extra gels and other food. That’s why I was thinking maybe concentrated mix bottles and water in pack.

ahh, sure. For those really long rides, I’d recommend eating a variety of things as often as possible. Typically I’ll start with some solid food and start to lean more on the simple sugars later on as trying to only consume gels, drink mix, etc. for 4+ hours never works well for me either. This could be a gut-training thing too. I’ve found that you need to train your gut to take in sugar over the long haul in the same way as you do with quantity. I can take in 100g/hour for 2-3 hours, but not any longer. I had to build up to that, and I think if your body is saying “enough” a few hours into a ride, it’s probably not used to digesting only sugar for that long. Some training might help, but the easier thing is to postpone the simple sugars until you don’t want to eat anymore and need to keep getting calories in. :rice_ball:

Yeah. That all makes sense. The second half of the race I leaned heavily on untapped maple syrup as those are so easy to consume. Very late in the race a honeybun got me to the end. I just need to keep working and testing things out.

I have been doing some longer rides/races and I will typically have two 26oz bottles with about 70 to 90 carbs per bottle. I will do 3-4 Skratch High Carb scoops and 1 Skratch Hydration scoop or Tailwind Scoop to increase electrolytes. I take a sip every 12 -15 minutes and will also have a hydration pack with clear water to be able to sip on occasionally. Having clear water is really nice on the longer rides. If I go higher in concentrate for bottles it seems to give me more gut issues. I then try to take a gel of 20-30 carbs every 30 minutes. A bottle will last me about 1.5 hours at this pace so I can get 3 hours from two bottles. Did a 100 mile gravel race couple weeks ago and the only stop I had was at mile 50 switching the two bottles from a small cooler I left on course. I had no support crew and total stop time was less than 30 seconds. Worked almost perfect with total race time of 5:48.

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Super concentrated carb mix bottles

Nutrition

JoeX June 6, 2024, 1:50pm 3

There’s a “gel” recipe thread that’s doing this

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